AIMUp – Action for the Innerleithen Mechanical Uplift

paulrockliffe – Member

Everyone just goes to GT for blue trails though.

but there’s only 1, it’s at Glentress, it’s not enough for a weekend’s riding if you’re not ready/willing for a red route*.

if there were 2 (with one at innerleithen), you have a weekend family destination.

yes, i know there are ‘natural’ trails/paths, but as with most natural trails, they’re often hidden / boring / far too hard / difficult to piece together into suitable loop, or a combination of the above.

(*a lot of people find them harder than you might think)

Does anyone know how much it costs to staff and maintain a chairlift once you’re beyond the initial outlay? Surely it can be done for £300k and still have something left for either repaying loans for the initial outlay or ongoing trail maintenance.

loan repayments for 5 million will be most of that. staffing will be £50 000 pa at a very bare minimum – probably double that.

Does anyone know how much it costs to staff and maintain a chairlift once you’re beyond the initial outlay? Surely it can be done for £300k and still have something left for either repaying loans for the initial outlay or ongoing trail maintenance.

I dont have a scooby doo how much it would cost, but i suspect 300k wouldn’t go very far as TJ says loan repayments, staff, infrastructure and grounds / trail maintenance etc.

I think the fundamental issue is that there was a golden opportunity for private investors to make this happen prior to the economic collapse and nobody did it. That tells me that the private sector was not interested or it wasn’t worth their while. If the private sector couldn’t make it fly i doubt a community based enterprise will, especially given the economic outlook.

I’m not knocking them for trying and you have to respect their desire for it to happen, but just because lots of people think its a good idea doesn’t automatically make it a successful business opportunity.

Part of my point earlier was that its fine having estimated numbers (and the CV numbers are estimates, but we did publish the methodology used, and we didn’t include every tom dick and harry who came through the forest gate :)) but you have to make a commercial decision based on an assumption that that 10,000 visitors would pay 30 quid every time for uplift (for example).

I’ll bet if you canvasased the nevis range the number of repeat visitors is probably quite low. This means you have to have something to attract new visitors all the time to help keep the flow of money coming in. DH is a niche within a niche sport so uplift doesn’t appeal to most people tbh.

Plus, when it came down to brass tacks there are loads of people out there who will be sitting saying “i’d happily pay 30 quid 20 times a year for uplift DH” but the reality is they wouldn’t put their hand in their pocket more than two or three visits.

Its just too much of a commercial risk IMO.

I think the trouble is that this is in Scotland, which, by its location, makes it

Cold\muddy in winter
far away for lots of people

If you could build one near a cheap international airport (ie one serviced well by budget airlines), central for the UK population (I’m a south coast rider but wouldn’t expect it down here), and built all the trails so they’d ride well in all weather, it could take off. You could make it a ‘go to’ location in the winter for riders throughout europe (in the same way the alps are the go to location in the summer).

Unfortunately inners doesn’t tick that box. Best of luck to them, I’ll be there the first week if it opens

i still think that local bikeshops / BnB’s / pubs / cafes / skills instructors would get more out of a £500,000 innerleithen blue route, than a £5,000,000 chairlift…

Generally I agree. Better 10 new trails / investments of £50,000 than one chairlift for £5M.

Best of luck to them but I’d rather see a load more trails in multiple locations rather than a single uplift at one spot.

There is a slight supporting argument about creating an exemplar facility and not dragging trails down to the lowest common denominator. However, it’s also the kind of rhetoric that has lead to some stupendous white elephants 😉

Whilst I also agree about the commercial sector not having done it before so it clearly can’t be viable I’d just add that it’s not your typical commercial venture when you have Forestry Commission involved. Not trying to be nasty, just an observation like 😉

Ironic that CV reserach is being quoted given what happened there.

Generally I agree. Better 10 new trails / investments of £50,000 than one chairlift for £5M.

for xc riders, yes, but for DH riders, they’d probably prefer the one-off investment in a lift and a single trail, more trails can be added later. Whistler’s single lower lift provides 49 (i think) trails, all dh-oriented, but some xc-able, and is busy all the time its open (at around £25/day after multi-day discounts).

it’d not be hard to add a load of lift-assisted xc into the mix, if the space was there. It’d not suit everyone, but some could argue there’s enough investment in xc riding already?

I think a ‘blue’ lift assisted xc trail could be a massive success in getting people out onto the trails

The plans do include an xc route or two as well – and there is some already there.

whistler has snow as well in the winter does it not? Innerleithan would have to stand alone on MTB usage – thats the issue and there is not really the room for 50+ trails anyway.

The issue is simply one of visitor numbers. It would need hundreds of people a day every day of the year to be viable. How many people would be paying on a miserable winters wednesday?

The only way it could be done is with massive subsidy. Think a million a year as well as writing off the capital cost

…I think a ‘blue’ lift assisted xc trail could be a massive success in getting people out onto the trails…

or, just design the climbs so that they’re fun too, My Girlfriend loves the climbs at G-T and Ae.

(gentle gradient, use switchbacks, include features)

don’t get me wrong, i’d love to see a chairlift. But there are cheaper/easier steps that could be taken to give the local tourist industry a massive boost.

A swoopy blue at innerleithen for example, it’d be ace, i could take my dad/nephew/girlfriend to stay in Inners/Peebles for the weekend, and we’d all have 2 great days out.

(and spend a load of money on accomodation, food, innertubes, coaching, etc.)

as it is now, there’s no point taking them there for the weekend; what would we ride on the sunday? – my dad’s 70, my nephew is 6, and my girlfriend is still a bit of novice.

If you spend £5M on getting a lift in then I suspect it’ll be an even bigger struggle to get yet more cash to build even more trails. If the economics are already stretched trying to justify the installation itself, there’s unlikley to be “spare” revenue to pay for more trail development, nevermind basic upkeep / wear & tear due to increased numbers.

So you’re talking £5M + however much to achieve something that appeals to the widest cross section of riders. As others have said DH’s a pretty small niche, of sport overall and even, some might argue, of MTBing (if you accept it is part of that wider group, call it what you like, folks on bikes 😉

It is tricky balancing mass appeal, accessibility and stuff that provides challenge or opportunity for progression. I still fall on the side of building loads of quality stuff accessible for lots of people compared to one chairlift. You’d certainly want to see some far reaching commitments form the land manager / owners to the future maintenance and development / expansion of the location. Is that in place or is it an assumption it’ll happen.

You’ve got to bear in mind FC’ll have to be dealt with.

The only way it could be done is with massive subsidy. Think a million a year as well as writing off the capital cost

Apply the same logic to GT or any of the other Stanes? Are any of them actualy financialy viable on their own or do they rely on a subsidy?

nothing on that sort of scale in terms of subsidy. No staff needed to run th trails, no massive capitol investment, no large ongoing maintenance bill

£6million just for the cafe/bike shop apparently

The £5m capital funding from Forestry Commission Scotland is supported with £200k from Sport Scotland and £740k from Scottish Enterprise.

nothing on that sort of scale in terms of subsidy. No staff needed to run th trails, no massive capitol investment, no large ongoing maintenance bill

Hang on, have you seen the finances for GT or the like. Or FC(S) and the Borders trails? Ought to be careful about such a sweeping statement.

There has been significant capital investment to develop the Stanes (European funding), there are staff (and all the associate expenses of kit, existence etc) and there’s always (AFAIK) been a bone of contention that the trails were put in and there wasn’t a sufficient or appropriate allowance for ongoing maintenance. Also, how do you think the numerous rebuilds etc have been achieved and new additions.

Might not be same scale as imagined for an uplift at Inners but if we’re criticising the proposal for a lack of reality lets not get too caught up in the fact that although comparitively cheap (to £5M) it hasn’t been “free” to develop the rest of the Stanes.

whilst the alps/whistler do have a high-paying winter season to provide funding, they also have 4 months of ‘downtime’ per year. a lift for year-round biking wouldn’t suffer from that.

incidentally, i just got back from Armenia, there was a lift there as part of a small town’s public transport system (ie not a tourist attraction). Each way was a massive..

7pence.

They may have lower overheads, and cheap labor, but things can be made cheap 🙂

Actualy, off the 7stanes website this time………….

it has a brand new state of the art £8.5m visitor centre with the following facilities:

•Car parks and bike wash
•Peel Gateway Building: Information, Toilets, Showers & Changing (open 9am – 6pm daily); Wild Watch Room (open 10am – 5pm daily)
•Glentress Peel Bikes operated by Alpine Bikes. Bike Shop and Bike Hire (open 9am – 6pm daily).
•Glentress Peel Café (open 10am – 5.30pm Mon to Fri and 9am – 6pm on Sat and Sun)

And £20/meter was mentioned upt here for trail building, GT has 50miles of trails, that’s another £1.6million.

So GT has probably cost over £10million + maintenance.

And downhillers don’t complain about braking bumps :-p

or, just design the climbs so that they’re fun too, My Girlfriend loves the climbs at G-T and Ae.

(gentle gradient, use switchbacks, include features)

whilst that will help attract folks, I think if you advertised a destination with ‘never have to pedal – outdoor fun for all the family’, get it in the national rags, people will come from all directions. The idea of riding uphill on a bike is far worse (for a lot of people) than the reality, and I think this makes them stay away.

20 years to build the trails at GT.

Look – if this is such a good idea why has it remained only a pipe dream for so long? Because its simply not viable

thing is, 10 years ago you’d have said a £8m cafe at a trail center would have seemed like an impossible dream. Depends what each government feels like investing in

That will not have ongoing annual costs of many hundreds of thousands of pounds

To be honest £5 million isnt a lot of money when you look at the wider picture. Yes current numbers (downhillers) would make it look unfeasible but riding numbers would probably double at least if there was lift assisted riding if not more. Then factor in the all mountain (140mm travel +) crowd becasue in reality you dont need a downhill bike to ride most of it apart from the obvious bits and numbers increase dramatically I know myself and other members of my riding club 50 or so riders would love something like this. A day riding the red at glentress or a day with lift assisted trails I know what most would prefer. The only reason they dont get used now is becasue people cant be bothered to push up.Spending money on blues is all well and good to encourage new riders but there isn’t much difference between them as there is only so much you can do to them before interesting features make it into a red. If they built more trails I know its more money on top of the lift cost based on fun flowy reds its makes it even more appealing to a wider audience yes downhillers may see this as them loosing out but it would be a fair compromise.

That will not have ongoing annual costs of many hundreds of thousands of pounds

lets say it’s £150,000 to run an uplift, that only needs an average of 14 riders per day (at £30/pop) to make it completely self-sufficient. If Nevis can make it work, and cwm down run most days of the week (with 2 full busses at weekends), why couldn’t somewhere else?

Also how does a xc trail generate funds to make it sustainable beside the £3 car parking fee it can’t cover it all. How is glentress paying its loan back. I think the up keep of it is very feasible with even very low numbers as someone calculated earlier.

5lab I agree with you totally 14 riders a day is nothing especially as I stated earlier it will also appeal to all mountain riders me being one. If anything it more feasible than xc trails as it generates more income

one way to look at it is..

Average XC trail : 17 miles long
Average DH trail : 1.5 miles long

based on costs earlier, the xc trail would cost £273,700 to build
DH trail costs £24,150 to build

This would leave £250k per dh trail to put towards a lift. Build 10 of them and you’ve nearly paid for it 😀

“build it and they will come” – lot to be said for following a dream however mad it might seem – some of the best inventions have come that way!

one way to look at it is..

Average XC trail : is ridden on an AM bike
Average DH trail : should be ridden on an AM bike

yeti – not sure of your point? there’s a load of dh trails that wouldn’t be much fun on an AM bike, but a trail center with lift could build trails for all abilities (as whistler\sun peaks\silverstar, for example)

A point? Errrm…

Just that it’s all mountain biking really and people seem a little hung up on it being DH or XC when most own a bike capable of riding any of it. IMO there’s only one DH course in the UK truly deserving of a full on DH bike and you’d still have fun riding it on a hardtail.

Out of interest does ‘mechanical’ exclude a minibus?

Do FC not harvest trees for a living ❓
Inners must be due to be harvested at some point in the future 😈

druidh – Member
Which raises the question – would it be better to go for uplift (and new DH trails) at Glentress given that there is already a cafe, shop, car park etc?

Being very cynical here but I reckon there could be 1 or 2 maybe even 3 trails allowed to fall by the wayside due to government cutbacks. GT is the only trail centre getting any real investment re new/improved/maintained trails as I see it atm.
Ae being as large as it is could have been the “Peel” centre of D&G.
If the issue is being revisited then is it not fair to assume that there might just be enough interest to make it worthwhile? I am not interested in DH and would be unlikely to use it but I know a few people who would.
As for trailhead cafes/shops I understand that the Mabie one just breaks even. Ae is in the same boat. Dalbeattie could never support one and you are not far from town anyway. The ones at Kirry and Glentrool were there before 7Stanes I think. The trailhead has been moved(?)into Newcastleton where there are a couple of cafes

All this is wonderful and heartwarming, but the dull reality is still there; the Tweed valley is not surrounded by huge mountains, its not that scenic, its got pretty poor transport links and the DH tracks are short, however sweet..
The idea that building a lift will suddenly produce a thousand new downhillers is pretty far fetched too. Add in the problems and increasing costs of transport from any major conurbation in the UK and little tiny wee doubts have to emerge.
Consider also the impact on other DH tracks around the UK, are you going to pay a substantial fee to establish and support a lift at Innerleithen then ride anywhere else?

It’s a project that will benefit the downhill scene with some small knock on local effects, with little thought for anyone else.

I’d want see real numbers; how many people will actually pay up front to finance it?

Crikey how many trail centres have good transport links there all in the middle of nowhere come to think of it most descent riding is in the middle of nowhere so transport aint the issue here. As for not getting at least 1000 new riders using the trails I would expect that as the minimum as noted in several posts you open it to a much wider audience ie 140mm travel bikes who cant be bothered with push ups. More riders can only be good for the local community not harm it as it would generate much more income bars, hotels, restaurants especially when a lot of them are struggling to break even now. The only real point you make is it will mean people using other places less which would harm investment in them but that also contradicts your point about not getting 1000 new riders.
by the way im not a downhiller but would still love to see something like this happen as it can only develop the sport and attract new people to it

how many trail centres have good transport links

The M4 seems pretty handy for those that live in London and want to get to Cwm Carn…

Until there are actual figures and actual costs, its a vanity project for about 350 downhillers, I’m afraid.

there’s a load of dh trails that wouldn’t be much fun on an AM bike

You probably are quite mistaken about what AM bike is then…
Plus what is wrong with pedalling your bike uphill.

how many trail centres have good transport links

M6 covers loads too.

There is just not enough to justify this, be nice if it did but even doubly the current riders wouldn’t pay. A nice pipe dream that’s been discussed for what over decade?

First I’ll admit to not being a number cruncher, I’ll leave that to others.

But I also think all this talk of DH is missing the point. I love riding my trail bike up & down but I will happily drive to France/Italy, etc to enjoy an uplift as do thousands of Brits.

For the project to really stand a chance the trails would have to follow the Whistler principle of having rideable lines for all.

With multiple lines for all then people would happily travel. Have I also not read about people doing a bit off snowboarding there on the odd occasion?

I live near Bradford and there’s a chap near me who runs skiing/boarding in his field when the snows right. So pretty sure Inners could open on powder days 🙂

IMO there’s only one DH course in the UK truly deserving of a full on DH bike and you’d still have fun riding it on a hardtail.

I take it you haven’t seen the Glencoe course?

lucien – Member

“build it and they will come” –

I agree ,but I think it would certainly need a combination of private finance with sympatheic government and local authority support to make it work and therein lies the problem.Edinburgh trams anyone??
How did the many ski resorts start and how were their lifts,roads and infrastructure funded,same goes for the many Greek and Spanish holiday resorts that needed airports and infrastructure too. No way will/can the taxpayer fund something like this and there isn’t that much private capital around in the current economic climate either. Any lottery winning MTBers out there looking to invest? 🙂

I agree ,but I think it would certainly need a combination of private finance with sympatheic government and local authority support to make it work and therein lies the problem.Edinburgh trams anyone??
How did the many ski resorts start and how were their lifts,roads and infrastructure funded,same goes for the many Greek and Spanish holiday resorts that needed airports and infrastructure too. No way will/can the taxpayer fund something like this and there isn’t that much private capital around in the current economic climate either. Any lottery winning MTBers out there looking to invest?

This mob managed to get over £700k from a variety of sources to build trails

http://www.callendarestate.co.uk/EZ/ce/ce/index.php

Whilst I’d agree you can ride any trail on any bike, a more matched bike will make it more fun. I did the sdw in a day on my 45lb freeride rig, thus proving that all xc bikes are rubbish outside of a competetive environment 🙂

However to be successful I think this would have to have as much lift assisted xc as ‘true’ dh. From either perspective, I suspect that if there’s a lift, trailmonkeys will appear to build up trails